Corporate Responsibility

My pistol-packing reader, szenes_aniko, has been teaching me about Corporate Responsibility and offerred us all some web-a-pedia access, specifically an article in Forbes magazine, which I expected to find really information. Imagine my surprise to read the following quote in it:

However, the notion that the corporation should apply its assets for social purposes, rather than for the profit of its owners, the shareholders, is irresponsible…The corporation’s goal is to act on behalf of its owners. The company’s owners–its shareholders–can certainly donate their own assets to charities that promote causes they believe in. They can buy hybrid cars to cut back on fossil fuel consumption or support organizations that train the hard-core unemployed. But it would be irresponsible for the management and directors of a company, whose stock these investors purchased, to deploy corporate assets for social causes.

THIS IS SO WHAT I EXPECTED and hardly the kind of socially-forward posture I would have expected from a hip girl in a black cloche, holding two pirate pistols aloft.

Does anyone besides me find this idea archaic? It’s probably a bit tasteless to quote oneself, but since I’m writing THE BOOK, I happen to have a few words on my thinking assembled, which I’ll add in a moment.

My friend, Paul Hawken once said to me that any ‘solutions’ of society’s problems would have to involve business, and I agreed. I expected that CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) would be the leading edge of this change, but, not according to Forbes. Have I missed something? What follows below, are my reasons for feeling that corporations have an implied responsibility to the society, over and above the wealth of their shareholders. Quoting myself:

The wages, medical benefits, or pension I receive from an employer are, in fact, neither totally mine nor theirs, despite being temporarily under our respective controls. Money is printed, advanced, earned, loaned and distributed with prior relationships and claims implied. While those claims are rarely discussed and consequently invisible, they exist and need to be examined.

In the first place, all wealth is or has been generated from the common bounty of the planet which, despite historical and cultural precedents asserting the contrary, is a common resource.Imagine if someone tried to charge you for the air? Remember the furor with which impoverished Bolivian Indians expelled French entrepreneurs from their country who were trying to privatize their water.

My premise does not deny the agency of the highly motivated and entrepreneurial, nor diminish their contributions to grand visions which organize labor and resources in vast enterprises. God bless ‘em. It is worth remembering that their wealth (when it wasn’t inherited) was also made possible by the numerous cooperative and civic institutions paid for with the time, labor, and treasure of others.

…Beginning with the “great commons”—sunlight, atmosphere, water, forests, and productive soil, and other species of animals, the wealth such men and women generate (and distribute) also occurs within a stable and safe society, Government guarantees of bank deposits and farm loans, and bail-outs form an invisible web of support for them. Laws and courts insure that transactions are protected, honest, and transparent and offer protection against fraud and malice(or that used to be the idea.)

Their industries employ laborers often educated at public expense, or provided to them cheaply by immigration policies of the Federal government. They require the Postal Service to move commercial goods and correspondence on roads and highways built, maintained, repaired and patrolled at public expense. The food that nourishes their bodies, or is served to their workers in cafeterias or purchased near places of work has been inspected and held to safe standards by Federal examiners (and the recent epidemics of salmonella and poisoned products offers a stark testimonial to what occurs when such support is diminished.) These are all paid for by tax dollars and I doubt that anyone considers them “a burden.” Bookkeeping, inventory, and communications are managed and facilitated by computers whose invention was funded by public tax money (an investment) which was then turned over to private profit-making entities to exploit.

When owners or employees become ill, the medicines they require have often been researched and tested at public expense in state universities and always certified by Federal examiners who require rigid protocols to prove their utility. Such agencies are also funded by taxpayers. Even in those cases where such medicines are wholly the product of private research, they are tested for safety and supervised at public expense and their patents are protected by the courts and the full power of the Federal government. Our telephone system and our federal highway system, our water and sewage infra-structure are likewise the product of sensible, long-term investment by taxpayers which have repaid the initial expenditures handsomely. When goods are shipped by truck, rail, or plane, they are sent off with the assurance that those vehicles have been tested for safety and reliability at public expense, and the highways and streets will be guarded and patrolled by police officers.

Finally: “Government agencies generate tons of data every day, informing businesspeople about the economy’s shape, its potential path, and the character of the international economic scene. Data flow uninterruptedly from an array of government serials…like the Federal Reserve Bulletin, Survey of Current Business, Business Statistics, Economic Indicators, Business Conditions Digest, U.S. Industrial Outlook, Commerce News and Recent Commerce and Commerce Publications Update.”

All of these public investments and services are as critical to the existence of a modern, first world society as a military to defend our borders against attack. These public investments serve the needs, safety, efficiency and interests of all citizens, including those who complain about the costs of maintaining others they consider of less consequence. The privileged wealth they guard so zealously could not exist independently of these public vast public expenditures, and yet to hear the free-market, drown-government-in-a-bathtub zealots speak, government itself is a cancerous institution robbing us of our freedom.

What I’m taking exception to, is the notion that some of us get to “own” the commons and claim its resources for ourselves and the rest of us don’t. I’m not suggesting that there should not be proportionate rewards, but the important point is that since we are all interdependent, some sort of reciprocity needs to be recognized and formally acknowledged. I call this Ceremonial Exchange.

Many thanks to sfspeak for clarifying his argument. He is asserting that within the corporate structure the modest, minimal share-holder gets zip to say in the form of policy. This is indisputable, but, being a dreamer, I’m trying to get at the underpinning of that argument that makes it okay. It seems to me that such a state of affairs has to deliberately overlook all the relationships that actually support the corporation; all the tax-payer dollars and services. If that reciprocity were written into the law as part of the corporate mandate, the small sharefholder, speaking on behalf of the community, would be backed up by the law, no?

Now, my friend SeanParnell is back with the core of his argument, (which is relevant) which I quote below:

No such thing exists. The “people” are all over the map on nearly every issue. Pro-choice or pro-life? Tax cuts or tax hikes? De-regulate or increase regulation? Invade Iraq or don’t? Single-payer health care or market-driven reforms?…Sorry, but as our national politics demonstrates time and time again, there is no such thing as the “will of the people” that is somehow being thwarted by the “corporate sector” or anybody else (pick your bogeyman: big oil, big labor, trial lawyers, the Christian Right, the Trilateral Commission, etc.). There are instead 300-plus million individual and sovereign citizens, each of them informed by their own values, experiences, priorities and perspectives on what is best for them and for their fellow citizens.

This argument is ludicrous on its face because it’s only half the picture. Sure, every grain of sand is unique. I get that, but in aggregate, they are a beach! All humans, no matter how unique are joined by certain biological imperatives. We all flee sufferring and run towards pleasure. Furthermore, in poll after poll, vast majorities (well over 50%) agree on environmental issues, reasonable gun control, abortion, women’s rights. The right-wing has been brilliant in linking up wing-nut minorities on these issues to create governing coalitions, but they do not represent the majority of the people. SeanParnell is deconstructing government in the same way that some students deconstruct literature: reducing it to a pile of sawdust and a puddle of ink. We

need a better shot at it, Sean.

I’m completely at peace with the fact that many people don’t share my opinions. I’ve worked in politics a long time. I’m much more concerned that when the political class does not share the opinions of the majority, they do not get represented. Let’s talk about that.

Had to boot off my first jerk. So sorry. Lovin’ everybody else, and hopefully next time will discuss evanravitz and ballot initiatives.